Startups have never been under more pressure to grow quickly. To do that, many of them must land large enterprises, the deep pockets of the IT world, as customers. But as any company that sells to enterprises will tell you, it’s not easy to win such contracts.
One critical mistake most younger startups make is believing that their tech will practically sell itself, says Arsalan Tavakoli-Shiraji, co-founder and senior vice president of field engineering at Databricks, which helps businesses store and analyze huge amounts of data.
Yes. The tech must work well. But that’s not enough, he warns. Databricks today is an AI and big data storage giant, valued at $190 billion, with more than 70% of the Fortune 500 as customers. But it was once a tiny startup, and Tavakoli-Shiraji was responsible for helping bring in its first big deals.
“Everybody when they’re selling to enterprises at startups … we think it’s all about the tech and having the best tech,” Tavakoli-Shiraji told attendees at TechCrunch Disrupt last week. But he learned the hard way that “people and processes matter the most.”
He remembers securing a meeting with a prospect in the early days, only to disc over that it was the same person who signed a mega-deal with his major competitor.
“He has no interest in listening to me because he bet his career on that competitor,” Tavakoli-Shiraji said.
He also remembers early deals fizzling because the startup wasn’t prepared for legal, contractual, or security questions.
He offered his top tips for startups to win big customers:
Sell under a bigger tech company’s umbrella
When Databricks was young, it tried and failed to score a meeting with UBS, the large Swiss bank. Then it did “a partnership with Microsoft,” becoming an Azure cloud partner. That meant sales agreements would be covered under Microsoft’s terms.
But it also meant that Microsoft’s sales folks actually booked the meetings and advocated for the startup. “All of a sudden, that meeting wasn’t hard to get,” the founder recalled. “It was a huge boon to us that we were able to partner with somebody who had that access and distribution.”
With Microsoft’s sales team helping, “we started getting pulled everywhere.” That created new problems, like prospects wanting features for countries Databricks hadn’t expanded to, but they were good problems to have.
